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Monday, October 11, 2010

All Is Mind - Everything is Mental Representation

By Daniel Kasou

Everything that we perceive as real in this universe becomes reality as mental representation. The mind plays a significant role in interpreting the external reality (world). The external environment is perceived through the five physical senses. The mind interprets and gives meaning to the physical world through the sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The sensory nervous system composes of the brain, spinal cord and the five physical senses, which could also be regarded as the material extension of the mind to the physical body. The nervous system is critically important as it act as the medium of channeling and transmuting physical (material) sensations into mental-thought forms and vice-versa. This is how billions of information regarding the physical reality can be easily stored and retrieved in the memory banks of our mind.  The memories are merely mental representations of our physical experience stored in the subconscious mind.  Information gathered from the five senses are perceived through the conscious aspect of the mind and then stored in the subconscious.  Hence, our conscious contact with the external world is nothing but the mind making sense of physical reality through the medium of nervous networking system coordinating the body to its mental counterpart.  If our five physical senses were disconnected from the body, the physical world would cease existing in reality but mental existence would still prevail. Every thoughts, ideas and concepts about the material reality is an extension of mental representation - “the consciousness.”

 As a matter of fact, all things and encounters in our livelihood whether favorable or unfavorable are just reflections of our own mental creation. “Your own thoughts, desires, and aspirations comprise your world, and, to you, all that there is in the universe of beauty and joy and bliss, or of ugliness and sorrow and pain, is contained within yourself.” (James Allen). Problems that are created have their roots in the mental constructs and thus, solutions should also be found in the exact place of where it was created. If solutions are thought to be outside of the mind then, it is merely an illusion as the outer world exists because of the existence of the inner world.  Our mind maps the external world through representing those thoughts and images in the mental construct-memory cells. Psychologists had realized that we operate upon the world, not directly, but via a map of the world. It seems amazing that all physical reality (the three dimensional world including time-space continuum) exists via the mind (consciousness) of man interpreting it as real. If that was the case, doesn’t it mean that all situations and conditions that we encounter had their roots in the mind? Absolutely, they are mental representations that extend into physical manifestations.

We give meaning to situations and conditions due to the mental representations (maps) about physical reality. We even make it more complicated by giving names, descriptions, images and definitions to things and situations so we can have fair understanding of them in physical reality. Even such phenomena as corruption, prejudices, crime, poverty, racism etc… exists according to the meaning we give mentally causing their manifestations in physical forms. According to the universal law of cause and effect, the manifestations in physical forms are the effects of the causes in mental forms.  The aim is to deal with the causes to heal the effects.  Any best effort to deal directly with the effects externally are doomed to failure as it is like running through a brick wall with expectations of shattering the brick layers. If you are a person who always pursues to fight against corruption, crime, violence etc, I bet you to understand and fully embrace the principles discussed so you may heal the effects through dealing with the causes. We must also understand the law of polarity; everything is duality in nature- the opposing degree in nature (good & bad, pain & relief, war & peace etc.) If we think such situation is bad and set our focus on how bad it is, then we shall expand more of how bad it is. The required approach, is when you see things as bad or not good, change your focus on its opposite (i.e. good) and always work mentally to change its external (physical) result. See the end result as your wish by focusing on the optimistic state and keep working on that alone and not on the negative side of the coin.

The famous Mother Teresa saw evil and suffering in this world and devotes herself in sharing peace in her mission to those in need.  We might believe that she was driven by the pain that cause these sufferings, however; it was the other way around-she was motivated by love-“the unconditional love.” It is through love that the universe and man was created and in order to restore the order of creation man has to embrace the same essence of which, he was created. Any other means besides would result in chaos (suffering). Therefore; if individual differences, corruption, violence, crime etc…still persist in Papua New Guinea no matter how hard we try to fight against, we might be looking and fixing our minds at the wrong side. “Change the way you look at things and the things that you look at would change.(Dr. Wayne. W.Dyer) Also quoted, “I think today the world is upside down, and there is suffering so much because there is so very little love in the home, and in family life.” (Mother Teresa) Do bear in mind that the outer world is merely the reflection of the inner and change starts from an individual and then extends to others. Everything has its roots in the consciousness (mind), seek and you shall find.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Our Mind is always in Constant Motion

By: Daniel Kasou



Our wonderful mind functions as a sending and receiving station of thought and never ceases working since conception. The thoughts that enter our mind are not always recalled from our memories but are decoded from other minds around as well. It is like a radio station set to a fixed frequency (mode) and that in order to receive its signal one has to tune in to that frequency. If we are always thinking thoughts or thoughts are being impressed on our mind then, it certainly means that our mind is in motion. The mind always vibrates at various levels of frequencies (waves) whether we are aware of it or not.  That’s why, every day we enter into various mental states and condition such as being; happy, worry, depress, afraid, confident, excited, romantic etc… The emotions are associated with the thoughts as they connect the mind to the body causing physiological response to mental states. Emotions can be summed up as neurological associations of thoughts. Mental theorists sometimes referred to e-motion as energy (mental energy) in motion. Every moment of our lives we never stop thinking; meaning thoughts are always being impressed upon our mind. For instance; if you attentively involved in activities, your mind might be with you or it may also roam outside projecting into the future, recalling past memories, anticipating your dreams and expectations etc…  This certainly, means that we are always thinking and the only time we pause from thinking thoughts is when we are fast asleep. The moment we wake up, the thoughts began to show up on our mental screen making us seem to be like thinking machines.

On average, we usually experience more than two thousand thoughts each day and each and every one of us has our own unique way of dealing with it. We developed habits, beliefs and thought patterns of the way we deal with each thought impulse and their associated images beneath our subconscious. It can only be categorize as either we do exercise control over the thoughts or they (thoughts) control our responses to mental states (experiences). You only have a choice, to take charge of which thoughts to entertain or dismiss. The mind power Law of Control states that; “we are forever experiencing thoughts, but we have the power to either entertain or dismiss them;” (John Kehoe). However; everyday of our lives we seem to have our mind take charge of itself by thinking which thoughts it wants, how it wants us to feel, what to believe in etc… It was conditioned by us unconsciously to operate on autopilot (default) as we seem to ignore the fact that we can control it.  Hence, we lose our power of control and tend to being reactive to circumstances instead of being proactive (taking control). Our mind was naturally engineered by the creator to function as a medium of exchanging thoughts (sending & receiving signals). He has also given man the power of choice (the will) to choose according to what best resonates with his heart. Our failure to embrace this key knowledge through our self imposed ignorance limits and separates us from the source as we will always be controlled by circumstances.  “To be ignorant of mind and its laws is to be a child playing with fire, or a man manipulating powerful chemicals without knowing their relation to one another. “(Charles Filmore)

Finally, Papua New Guinea has now reached its 35th anniversary of independence. As a sovereign nation it is made up of citizens or individuals that inhabit it. It’s the people (humans) that give meaning to a nation and not just the bare landmass with natural surroundings. Hence; every individual plays a key role to the collective status of the nation. We cannot always control the external circumstances that we think our nation should be governed this way or that way as we cannot always control others but can give the best in controlling ourselves. Please, remember that the nation as a whole is a collective extension of every one of us, the individuals. Through the essence of knowledge and understanding of our own nature puts us in alignment with what best we can offer to others and our nation as a whole.  The Journey of Self-Discovery is the best journey one can encounter.  The determinant of change is in your hand.

Happy Independence Papua New Guinea and Dare to Think Different!



Other Related Posts:
1. Circle of Influence
2. The Inner and Outer Worlds